Just A Little Thing
by InactiveNoLongerUsed
Summary: Rose is determined to keep her relationship with Scorpius a secret, but Scorpius decides that he's had enough of excuses and confronts her about it. Rose has always been stubborn, but will Scorpius be able to make her see that she's not always right?


**Hello people! This was written for headagainstthesky's**** "I Write Way Too Much Dialogue So Let Me Give Some To You" Challenge. The challenge for me was:**

Your characters: Rose/Scorpius

They are arguing because: Rose wants to keep their relationship a secret, but Scorpius is tired of having to sneak around

Your dialogue:

1. "This isn't easy for me either!"

2. "I don't know what I want."

3. "I thought I was more important to you than that."

4. "Don't treat me like a child."

5. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

6. "You're just lying to yourself."

7. "I don't care about everyone else."

8. "Yeah, well, let me know when you find out."

**Let me just say that I really enjoyed writing this. It's a bit cliche and a teensy bit dramatic, but I did love it and I hope that shines past the clichedness and dramaticness :). I was also so over the moon that my pairing was Rose/Scorpius because they have got to be one of my favourite ever pairings in the history of Harry Potter fanfiction. **

**Also, my word limit was 2000 but I went over it and the actual story is 2394 words but I didn't want to cut anything... heehee...**

**Anyway, read and enjoy!**

* * *

"I need to talk to you," Scorpius said seriously, lingering behind the now empty classroom. The rest of the students had long gone, and they had stayed behind inconspicuously, out of habit more than anything else.

Rose looked at him curiously, sitting herself down on her desk. "Why? What's wrong?"

"I don't know... I don't know how much longer I can keep this up, Rose," Scorpius ran a hand through his hair tiredly. For the first time, she noticed how exhausted he looked and a pang of guilt stabbed at her. "I'm always having to lie about where I'm going, what I'm doing. I don't like it."

"You mean you want everybody to know about us?" Rose's expression hardened. She had gone completely still, afraid of what was coming next.

Scorpius breathed in deeply as he leaned against the desk opposite her, eyes on the floor. "I want us to stop acting like we're Romeo and Juliet and we have to sneak around behind our families' backs."

Rose glowered at him angrily, her eyes flashing fire at him. She was leaning forwards in her seat, now. "You know what I think about the situation. You know why I don't want people to know about us. We might not be Romeo and Juliet, Scorpius, but it's not like our families are all lovey-dovey with each other either. Can you imagine what Dad would say? What my family would say? What _your _family would say?"

Scorpius stared at her intently. "I don't care about everyone else. It doesn't matter what they think."

Rose jumped down from her desk suddenly, wincing slightly as the hard stone floor jolted her knees. She pushed the mild pain out of her mind as she gripped the corners of her desk, glaring back at her boyfriend. "It will matter to you, but it'll be too late by the time you realise that. I can't believe you don't understand this! It's more complicated than just your everyday boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, Scorpius. Your family isn't exactly popular with mine, and you know it. Not to mention how I'm a stupid 'blood-traitor', if what your grandfather says is anything to go by. It just won't work if we let everybody else know."

Scorpius stayed silent for a few moments, thinking over what to say. Rose had always been the more dominant personality in their relationship - it was hard for her to be anything other than the decision-maker. Up until now, Scorpius hadn't minded. He had found it exciting, new. Now it was starting to get on his nerves. Why did she have to always make the decisions? Surely his opinion counted as much as hers did. Anger started boiling deep within him. He was giving more to her than she was giving to him. He wouldn't have minded if she didn't always make him sound like the one responsible, the bad one who made the mistakes that she had to fix.

"How do you know?" Scorpius bit out, as angry as she was now. "If you really wanted this relationship to go anywhere, somebody was going to have to find out someday. Unless you've changed your mind about us?"

"Don't treat me like a child."

"How in Merlin's name did you get the idea that I'm treating you like a child?" Scorpius yelled, infuriated. "That's your defense to everything, isn't it? I'm being unfair, right? _I'm_ the one who's treating you like a child, not the other way around? I'm only asking for your goddamn opinion! How the heck has that got anything to do with me treating you like a child?"

"This isn't easy for me either!" Rose fumed, unable to defend herself on that point and so falling back on another. "Do you think that I don't have my own problems to deal with? Do you think that I'm not lying through my teeth to all my friends as well?"

Scorpius snorted. "Oh, please. Save me the sob story. If you're really having as much trouble as I am, then you'd want to stop sneaking around and seeing each other in secret, wouldn't you? But, oh no, your _reputation_ has to be considered. I thought I was more important to you than that. If you think so much more of your reputation than of me, then why don't we just stop seeing each other?"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Rose snapped, but inside she felt herself shrivelling up and dying. She didn't want this relationship to end, but she was too proud to back out of it now. Too proud to say that she hadn't meant anything and that she WAS sorry, so sorry. The corners of the desk were starting to really hurt her palms, but she relished the pain somehow. It made it more bearable as she waited for him to say something.

"You heard it, Rose. What do you want to do? Because if you aren't serious about us, then it's not worth carrying on, is it?" Scorpius sounded more bitter than she had ever heard him sound before. It scared her. Sweet Merlin, he wasn't joking. He actually meant it. Another small part of her seemed to die at that moment. Maybe he wanted to end it. Well, if that was what he wanted, then so be it.

"I don't know what I want," Rose whispered, her eyes burning. She knew that she was going to cry. But not in front of him. She wouldn't allow him to see her cry. Not now, not ever. It would be beyond humiliating.

He walked towards the classroom door and opened it, his silent anger more terrible than when he had yelled at her before. He made as though to walk out of the room, but then he turned his head towards her. Softly, he murmured. "Yeah, well, let me know when you find out."

And then he was gone, and Rose crumpled up into a heap on the floor, ignoring how much her hands hurt as blood flowed back through them fiercely, ignoring how cold the floor felt. The full reality of what had just happened surged through her and she felt tears trickle down her cheeks. Reaching for her wand, she waved it at the door so that it slammed shut and nobody could hear her sobbing.

How cliched was it that she had just discovered now what she had done, what she had lost?

* * *

The next few days seemed to go by without her really noticing them at all. Rose humourlessly remembered once, in third-year, telling her friends how no boy would ever make her miserable enough to miss classes. Well, apparently she had been wrong. She missed a lot of classes that week. She didn't want to see him, to let him know how much his leaving had affected her. Even now, her pride was strong enough that she simply couldn't bear the thought of him seeing what kind of state she was in now.

She didn't need him, she told herself. She didn't need him nearby to tell her everything was going to be okay. It wasn't as though she was in love with him or anything, anyway. He was just her boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend, she reminded herself, ignoring how much it hurt to say that little prefix 'ex'. No. She didn't care for him at all.

"You're just lying to yourself," Rose whispered to herself once, exactly a week after they had broken up. She knew it was useless to tell herself otherwise. She did need him. She did want him to be with her. She _was_ in love with him, even though it sounded ridiculous for a sixteen-year-old to declare that she was profoundly and deeply in love with somebody. Maybe she wasn't _in_ love with him, but she was awfully close to being so.

She rose from where she had been lying down on her bed. Madam Pomfrey had told the Professors that Rose was going through a difficult time because of the pressure of exams or something. Rose didn't really care, so long as it meant that she didn't have to go to classes.

Rose slipped on some shoes and smoothed down her wrinkled Hogwarts uniform. She padded over to the door of the girls' dormitories, deciding that the library was the best place to go for her. It would calm her down, reading about something so far away from what she was experiencing now. Maybe it would distance herself from her emotions.

She walked, hardly aware of her surroundings. Her hand rubbed across her face, feeling a slight wetness but not really caring any more. It wasn't as if most of the school hadn't seen her crying at some point or another over the past half a decade or so that she had been here. They would probably also put it down to exam stress. Rose laughed bitterly at the thought of ever being upset over something as mundane as essays.

The library was completely empty. Nobody wanted to stay inside unless they had classes when it was a day as sunny and cheerful-looking as this one. Rose was extremely glad that she could be alone here. Nobody would question her on why she looked like she did and why she was acting so strangely.

She wound her way towards the shelves at the very back of the library, breathing in the smell of musty old books mingled with fresh-smelling new parchment. For the first time, Rose understood the comfort that her mother had found in the Hogwarts library. It was so large that it made her feelings look quite small in comparison, and there was a comfort in knowing here was an escape from emotional and even physical pain, just by opening the pages of one or two well-written books.

Settling down on the floor at the end of the line of shelves, Rose didn't even bother to open a book. She just sat there, breathing in and out as she tried to push away the feelings that were threatening to overwhelm her yet again. It was so stupid that she could be this affected by another person. Even as she told herself that for the hundredth time, the tears slithered down her face once more. It was as though she had turned into nothing more than a living reincarnate of Moaning Myrtle.

Footsteps muffled by the heavily carpeted library floor sounded nearby. Rose didn't really care, too mixed up in feeling miserable. The footsteps came closer and closer, so Rose simply buried her head in her arms, enabling herself to cry but not be seen by whoever it was that was coming. Eventually the footsteps stopped right in front of her, and soft sound of surprise escaped from the person's lips.

"Oh, _Rose_," the voice was familiar, too familiar. Rose stiffened as she felt rather than saw her ex-boyfriend kneeling down beside her.

"Go away," she mumbled through her tears. Her voice sounded muffled and oddly alien even to her.

An arm went around her shoulders and, despite herself, Rose took comfort in the feeling. "Rose, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I... I wasn't thinking... I didn't want to break up with you... but I'm happy with being just friends if you'll forgive me..."

Rose looked up at him, surprised to see that he looked only a little better than she did. "Are you being dumb on purpose, Scorpius? It was my fault. I'm always speaking before I think and it figures that it'd be me who messed it all up for us. You don't have to say sorry. You had a right to be angry. I... I'd like it if we could go back to being boyfriend and girlfriend... but if you don't want to..."

"Of course I want to," Scorpius laughed softly, and the sound thrilled her. She couldn't count the number of times in the last week that she wished she could hear it again.

Rose stared at him for a moment, taking in his blond hair, his grey eyes that she could see were dancing happily even in the dim light, his pale skin that was tinged slightly pink with delight. How could she deserve this? He was so calm, so thoughtful and considerate... genuine and compassionate. Ugh. Whoever had put him in Slytherin didn't know him at all.

"Can I... can I ask you if you still want everybody to know about us?" Rose murmured cautiously. He stiffened slightly but continued to smile at her, making her insides glow with an unfamiliar warmth.

"Only if you want to. I'd rather be with you and nobody know than be without you and have people know that we used to be together," Scorpius said honestly, causing Rose to squirm guiltily. "I mean, I would prefer it if people did know. I want people to know we're together, but... you know... we can't always get what we want, and you are already basically all that I want anyway, even if it sounds really cheesy."

"You know what?" Rose said thoughtfully, her insides melting. She cursed herself for being such a sentimental fool, but plowed onwards any way. "I don't care about what everyone else think either. Yeah, Dad will blow his head off, and Lucius Malfoy will probably die of embarrasment but hey... tough luck. They had their own romances any way."

Scorpius beamed at her. "What made you change your mind?"

Rose leaned forwards and kissed him lightly on his mouth. "Oh, I don't know... maybe... just a little thing..."

When he drew back slightly to look at her, eyes curious, she gave in and shrugged. "Just a little thing called love."

And this time, when she leaned forwards, he didn't resist.


End file.
